Chapter 62
“Yuriene!”
The sight of the red stain blooming on his white uniform shattered her reason completely.
Not again, not again did she want to see that sight. A white figure stained crimson.
Her heart seemed to stop. Her mind went blank. Before thought or judgment, her body moved first. She shot forward.
[Hey, hey, wait, calm down…….]
The Demon Sword said something, but she didn’t hear it.
Her slender body flew like a bird over the flames. The scorched edges of her dress spread out like wings.
Her leap carried her to the swinging arm of the black giant. She stepped on the forearm and leaped again. High enough to look down on the giant’s head. Blue fury blazed in her violet eyes.
‘A Monster dares…….’
As if her anger was transferred along the blade of Amethyst, Mana crackled and flowed. Violet flames blazed. It expanded along the blade, becoming a line that cut through the air.
As the owner of Bardelgiosa, she instinctively knew where the core was. The Mana, stretched out like a spear, pierced the crown of the black giant’s head. The giant collapsed, emitting a silent shriek.
Eki didn’t watch the giant fall. Before the tips of her shoes touched the ground, avoiding the flames, she checked on Yuriene first.
Her anxiety soared to the extreme, making her fingertips and toes feel frozen.
How badly is he hurt? Please, no major injuries. Oh, right, Shai, Shai is here, I can ask her to heal him, yes, that’s it. I can’t bear to see you die twice. So please.
“Yu…….”
[……Hey, Master, I told you to calm down, didn’t I?]
Her trembling eyes met a pair of wide, sky-blue eyes. Yuriene was standing unharmed, staring at her with a blank expression. Speechless, Eki slowly examined his condition.
He was bleeding. His forearm was scratched, and blood was spreading on his white uniform. But it was a very minor injury. Just a long tear in the skin.
The length of the wound made it bleed a lot, but it was so shallow. In fact, it was hardly an injury at all.
Reason finally returned. Come to think of it, Yuriene had been easily dealing with the black giant until just now. It only took time because the black giant was a regenerative Monster and its core was hard to find.
Realizing this, Eki stood frozen in place.
‘What…… what have I done?’
Behind her, the remains of the black giant collapsed with a roar. The wind stirred up by the collapse made her hair and the hem of her dress flutter. The flames bowed in the wind and then stood up again.
The village resident who had been the instigator was sprawled among the remains of the black giant, but neither Yuriene nor Eki had the leisure to check on him.
[Well, um, Master, at least you didn’t take me out, so maybe we can get away with this? Or we could just kill him and destroy the evidence. Dead men tell no tales!]
The Demon Sword offered words that were hard to tell if they were comforting or fanning the flames.
Eki felt her mind going blank again, for a different reason than before.
The silence stretched on. In the meantime, the two or three remaining mud giants charged at them with grotesque noises. Eki stood there, lost in thought, whether they charged or not.
Yuriene moved. He easily dealt with the remaining giants with Rangiosa and then turned back to Eki.
Her face was completely drained of blood, making her look like a porcelain doll. Only the crackling of the flames could be heard all around.
Eki couldn’t think. Even if the Demon Sword wasn’t exposed, this was on a different level than with Baraha. She had shown it to the person she absolutely didn’t want to be caught by, with her own hands.
How to resolve this, whether it was even possible to resolve it, was just daunting.
Yuriene, having dealt with the remaining giants, had calmed down and had a composed expression. He hesitated slightly, looked at her, and then cautiously called her name.
“Ekinesia.”
At that call, Eki trembled as if struck by lightning. And without realizing it, she took a step back.
When faced with a crisis, she tended to rush in rather than avoid it. That had been the case for the most part until now. But at this moment, she just wanted to disappear from this place.
Because Yuriene was someone she couldn’t face.
“Ekinesia? Are you alright?”
Yuriene called her again. Eki’s face was so pale it was almost blue. She turned around and tried to run away.
“Wait……!”
Yuriene hurriedly grabbed her arm as she turned away. Eki reflexively shook it off and stumbled backward. Her wide, violet eyes were shaking like a sailboat caught in a storm.
Seeing that, he strode towards her. Eki staggered back.
During their sparring sessions, he had stopped when he saw Eki retreating. But this time, he didn’t stop. He quickly approached and grabbed her shoulders.
Even as Eki tried to pull away, he didn’t let her go.
Yuriene had never laid a hand on her carelessly before. Even when he hugged her after she came out of the Node, he had been easily pushed away when she resisted.
But not now. His hands on her shoulders were firm.
She could use Mana to shake him off, but she couldn’t even think that far. She had just made such a fuss and been caught, there was no way she could use Mana with him right in front of her.
Without Mana, her body was just that of a fragile young lady who hadn’t trained much. It was impossible to escape from the Knight’s grasp. If she had any reason left and could use some tricks, maybe, but right now she was just struggling in terror.
Yuriene looked down at her. She avoided his gaze. He took a breath and said as if driving a stake into the ground.
“I knew.”
Eki stopped resisting. The words she heard were slowly understood. She blankly looked up at him. His clear, sky-blue eyes, as if seeing through her, held her completely.
As if he knew what she was afraid of, he repeated.
“Because I knew, don’t worry.”
“……Wh-what?”
He quietly answered her squeezed-out question.
He knew? How? How did he know? Then why did he pretend not to know? Since when did he know?
Question marks swirled in her mouth. Completely confused, Eki stammered.
“K-knew…… How…… Since when…….”
How could he have known? Had there been an opportunity for him to know? Had she done something to get caught? Or, perhaps, based on his memories from before the regression, had he realized that she was the Demon of the Demon Sword?
As her wandering thoughts reached that point, the blood in her entire body turned into ice shards, tearing through her insides.
‘If he found out I’m a Demon, then I’m…….’
If she was branded as the owner of the Demon Sword, she would be hunted by the Magic Tower and the Azure Knights, watched by every country, and her family would suffer. Her peaceful life would be completely shattered.
But even before that, she imagined Yuriene looking at her with hateful eyes.
She didn’t want to see that sight. Absolutely. Even though it was only natural.
Eki lowered her head and covered her face with both hands. She couldn’t escape because he was holding her shoulders, so she hid her face.
Her body temperature plummeted, but only her eyes burned hotly. Tears, hot enough to burn, welled up and threatened to overflow. Her breathing was ragged, and it was hard to stand. A fear rose up, as if she would sink into the Abyss below and never touch the sunlight again.
Yuriene’s hands were supporting her staggering body. He lowered his head towards her, still holding her shoulders. He tried to see her face through the gaps in her hands, but then he realized that her shoulders were trembling in his grasp.
Yuriene made a collapsing expression. She, who had hidden her face in her hands, didn’t see it. His lips, which had been moving as if he wanted to say something, closed as if making a decision.
He bent down and lowered himself to her eye level.
“Ekinesia, look at me.”
He whispered softly. Eki was still burying her face in her hands. Her breath was ragged. He continued in a low voice.
“If you want to hide it, I will hide it for you. If you want, I will try to forget it as well. So look at me.”
Even though it was a stiff tone, it sounded like a plea. She didn’t understand the meaning of his words. He would hide that she was a Master? He would try to forget? Why?
She took her hands away. Through the tears that blurred her vision, she saw his face right in front of her.
His eyes wavered at the sight of her tears. He composed his face, which was about to fall apart, and spoke step by step.
“Because I knew you were a Master, I wanted to spar with you. I will now say what I said I would answer after the sparring.”
Yuriene, holding onto her as if she would run away, created a lie that she could accept.
“I said before that I saw you at the birthday banquet and remembered you. At that time, I recognized the talent you had. So I took a personal interest, and as soon as you became a Military Cadet, I accepted you as a Squire.”
“Recognized talent…… How?”
At the birthday banquet, she had been a common noble lady who had never held a sword. As Eki asked back as if she didn’t understand, he hesitated for a moment.
“……It’s not that I knew you were a Master. I just knew that if you held a sword, you would be better than anyone else. The reason I recognized that was because I am the owner of the Holy Sword.”
“Did Rangiosa have such an ability?”
Because she didn’t meet the conditions to be an owner, Eki couldn’t wield Rangiosa. So even she, who had gathered all ten Giosa, didn’t know about the abilities of Rangiosa other than the widely known ones.
Yuriene smiled bitterly for a moment. And he skipped over the question without answering it clearly.
“I started to suspect that you were a Master when I met you at the fountain, and I became certain during the freshman Ranking match.”
“The fountain……?”
“Your hands weren’t those of someone who enjoyed swords. I watched you during the selection test. To use that level of skill with almost no signs of training on your body, it’s impossible unless you’re familiar with Mana. So I suspected, and I became certain while watching you during the freshman Ranking match.”
“You were at the freshman Ranking match?”
“Not officially, but.”
Unofficially, meaning he watched in secret. Eki opened her mouth in embarrassment and then closed it. The words he had said were slowly pieced together in her mind.
So, he knew I was a genius since the birthday banquet, and that’s why he remembered me, and when I happened to enter the academy, he quickly made me a Squire? Because he coveted my talent?
And then, seeing my outstanding skills that didn’t match my untrained body, he noticed that I was a Master, and that’s why he kept wanting to spar with me.
[Is there only a sword in his head?]
The Demon Sword muttered. It was hard to deny those words. As she became dumbfounded, the burning sensation in her eyes subsided. Only a single tear that had already welled up flowed over.
